About Optics & Photonics TopicsOSA Publishing developed the Optics and Photonics Topics to help organize its diverse content more accurately by topic area. This topic browser contains over 2400 terms and is organized in a three-level hierarchy. Read more.

Topics can be refined further in the search results. The Topic facet will reveal the high-level topics associated with the articles returned in the search results.

Abstract

The holographic optical trapping technique creates arbitrary three-dimensional configurations of optical traps, each with individually specified characteristics. Holographic modification of the individual traps’ wavefronts can transform conventional point-like optical tweezers into traps with different structures and properties, and can position them independently in three dimensions. Here, we describe a technique for rapidly characterizing holographic optical traps’ three-dimensional intensity distributions. We create volumetric representations by by holographically translating the traps through the optical train’s focal plane, acquiring a stack of two-dimensional images in the process. We apply this technique to holographic line traps, which are used to create tailored one-dimensional potential energy landscapes for mesoscopic objects. These measurements highlight problems that can arise when projecting extended traps with conventional optics and demonstrates the effectiveness of shape-phase holography for creating nearly ideal line traps.

Figures (4)

Virtually all of the light focused by the objective lens onto the mirror is collected for z ≤ 0. For z > 0, by contrast, the outermost rays fall outside the objective’s pupil, reducing the overall collection efficiency. This figure also indicates the sign convention for z.

(a) Three-dimensional reconstruction of an optical tweezer propagating along the z axis. Cross-sections in the xy, yz and xz planes are colored by intensity according to the inset scale. The horizontal dashed line indicates the plane z = z0 in which the xy section is obtained. The inset isosurface encloses 95 percent of the incident light and the scale bar denotes 5 μm. (b) Volumetric reconstruction of 35 optical tweezers arranged in a body-centered cubic lattice. [Media 1]